IPL 6: Will focus purely on winning the game: Tom Moody

Hyderabad - Sunrisers Hyderabad will focus purely on winning the game against Rajasthan Royals Friday, without bothering about various calculations to reach the semifinals, chief coach Tom Moody said Thursday.

With 16 points from 14 games, Sunrisers are currently at fifth position behind Royal Challengers Bangalore, who also have equal points but are ahead because of better net run rate.

RCB have only one game to go while Sunrisers face Royals Friday and Kolkata Knight Riders Sunday.

“The atmosphere in the team has been very good from start of the tournament. Nothing has changed. We are looking forward to the opportunity tomorrow. It’s nice to be back home for the last two games,” he told reporters after the team had a practice session at the Rajiv Gandhi international stadium here.

“If we are caught up looking too much what to do to qualify for semifinals and what other teams need to do to help us qualify for semifinals, we are making a big mistake. Our focus will be purely on winning the next game,” he said adding that he was not interested in looking at various calculations.

Cameron White, who led the side for last couple of games, will be captain in Friday’s match as well.

About the pitch, Moody said it looked like another decent wicket. He said the team had improved in the tournament as it went along. “Lot of people were writing off our batting. We have struggled at times but more importantly found the way to win the games. We showed in the last game we are more than capable as a batting unit if the surface is there to express yourself as a batsman. We have also played on some challenging wickets where free flowing batting was hard to do. It’s our ability to adapt to batting most important thing in next two games and hopefully beyond.”

He believes it would not be difficult for the team to bounce back after losing their previous game to Chennai Super Kings. “That game is gone. We are concentrating on tomorrow. We got too many positives to draw from with our experiences to get caught up in one game. We hopefully will learn from that experience and we will react in the right way when under pressure the next time.”